


a journey that must be traveled

by Chex (provetheworst)



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, F/F, Trigedasleng
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2016-03-18
Packaged: 2018-05-25 11:20:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6193021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/provetheworst/pseuds/Chex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After an Imperial Star Destroyer is dragged out of hyperspace and destroyed under mysterious circumstances, a gaggle of the Empire's worst delinquents - led by low-ranking medical officer Clarke Griffin - have to try to find their way off a low-tech planet. The locals aren't helping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Why is this a Star Wars AU? Why not. It's set sometime between the prequels and original trilogy, with no real regard for Rebels canon.
> 
> Clarke/Lexa end-game with an eventual happy ending, I promise. I'll update the warnings as-needed, though violence is the only real concern.
> 
> Also I apologize in advance for my Trigedasleng. It's not great.

“Lieutenant!” A commander’s yelling at her, barely audible over the sound of explosions. He grabs her arm roughly. “Return to your post -”

She twists around and jabs him sharply in the sternum with her elbow, before taking off down the hallway. Sparks fly from seemingly everywhere, and the corridors of the ship are full of chokingly thick black smoke. No hull breach in this section, at least, for which she’s grateful. The blast doors closed just in time. That doesn’t mean this half of the Star Destroyer is going to last for long.

No one else is staying at their posts, either. There are officers and Stormtroopers scattering everywhere. The captain goes straight for the nearest escape pod. It’s not the one she was assigned to, technically, but it’ll have to do. If any of her commanding officers survive, they can take it up with her later.

Around a half-dozen other people have made it to the escape pod, and they’re all piling on top of each other trying to get through the door at once.

“Stop!” she barks. At least one of them outranks her. “We have to go one by one, or none of us will make it.”

That knocks some sense into them. One of them, Captain Blake, takes up her cause, helping everyone into the pod and helping her maintain order. By the time they’re ready to go, there are ten of them in the escape pod, and the alarms are blaring even louder than before. She didn’t know the volume went up that high.

It’s Captain Blake who mashes the button to detach the escape pod and send it careening off into space. An explosion from the main ship rocks their little pod, but everyone’s strapped in. No one seems hurt.

As they careen away, she takes a deep breath and looks at the escape pod’s lone viewport to watch the Star Destroyer Hydra collapse in on itself. Vacuum puts out the bursts of flame quickly as they consume the last of the ship’s massive oxygen stores. Soon, it’s nothing more than a chaotic debris field. She sits back in her seat, letting out a heavy breath.

“Well,” a trooper says, pulling off his helmet. He’s the only one that made it with them. “That went well.”

“Murphy?” Captain Blake asks, incredulously, before starting to laugh. “Is there anything in the galaxy that can keep you down?”

“Guess not,” the trooper, Murphy, replies. “Oh, hey, Clarke.”

Clarke groans. “Here I thought I wouldn’t have to patch you up again.”

“You still might get off easy,” Murphy says. He holds his helmet in his lap. “Either we get picked up soon and we’re fine, or we run out of oxygen and -”

An alarm starts to blare inside the escape pod. One of the other officers announces the problem - “We’re caught in the planet’s gravity well. Our stabilizers were damaged in that last explosion and we can’t maintain orbit.”

“Oh, great,” Murphy says. “Can we fix it?”

“Does that armor of yours let you do EVA?”

Murphy snorts. “As if.”

“Then no,” the officer says. 

“Great. You know, I was planning on deserting anyway. I guess this makes that easier.” Murphy closes his eyes, leaning back and taking measured breaths.

The little escape pod starts to rattle as it accelerates down toward the planet’s surface, orbit decaying faster than Clarke could have imagined. Captain Blake and the others are trying to scramble to find some sort of solution, but to no avail. They’re being so loud. All Clarke can focus on is the pounding of blood in her ears.

Even with the pod’s heat shielding, it starts to warm significantly inside. Clarke lips the sweat from her lip and closes her eyes as well. Murphy had the right idea there; she doesn’t want to see any of what’s about to happen. Under her breath, she mumbles a little prayer from her home station to herself. 

Final journey to the ground, indeed.

-

What surprises Clarke most when she wakes up is how clean the air smells. There is a canopy of blueish trees up above, and the sounds of people moving around. Either these are her mind’s last fevered attempts at firing while she dies, or she somehow survived the crash.

Unless someone tells her differently, she’s going to go with the second one. 

She sits up slowly, her whole body sore. She curles her toes and clenches her hands into fists, then relaxes both. Nothing seems broken and she has full control over her extremities, which is lucky.

“Oh, Clarke.” It’s Captain Blake. “You’re awake.”

“Mm.” She rubs at her eyes. “Where are we?”

“Don’t know,” Captain Blake says, shaking his head. “We dropped out of hyperspace way too early, and the crash …”

“Okay,” she says. She pushes herself to her feet. “How many survivors?”

“You, me, Murphy. General Leonis and Admiral Sarkal didn’t make it. The prisoner I was escorting made it. Lieutenant Miller and some engineer are both injured - I don’t know if it’s anything you can help. I didn’t get a look at the other two, but they’re dead, too.”

“So that’s six of us. Great.” Clarke looks around the heavily wooded area. Miller and the engineer - a girl Clarke recognizes but can’t place - are both lying not far from where she was. Murphy’s crouched down in front of a pile of sticks, getting a fire going. There are animals, maybe birds, crying out in the trees around them. Without a better idea of what the local fauna are like, Clarke doesn’t know if they’re distressed or if this is just their usual level of enthusiasm.

“The escape pod’s in bad shape,” Captain Blake says, matter-of-factly. “The regular distress signal isn’t broadcasting. I tried to get a message out over the comm, but I don’t think it worked.”

“Here’s hoping we got a competent engineer, I guess,” Clarke sighs, looking the other girl over. Her visible injuries aren’t too bad, but that’s not saying much. Without any other diagnostic tools, Clarke has little to go on. Clarke doesn’t even have bandages or cloth to take care of the gashes all along the engineer’s arm, or to wipe the blood from her forehead. She has a morbid thought suddenly, though. “Hey, do you think you can get the uniforms off the - uh, the deceased?”

“What?” Captain Blake asks, taken aback.

“We need bandages.” Clarke refuses to look at him. Her heart has sped up, and she’s feeling a little nauseous at the thought of stealing dead people’s clothes. This is what she studied for, though. She wants to help people, save as many as possible, and if the dead aren’t making use of the supplies …

“Bandages.” Captain Blake’s voice sounds hollow. “That’s awfully cold.”

“I don’t want anything getting in the wound,” Clarke says. She takes a quick glance at Miller - he doesn’t seem harmed at all beyond a few bruises, but he’s unconscious. She’ll do what she can after taking care of the engineer. There’s no way she’s getting those supplies herself, though.

The thing is, she’s seen dead bodies before. They’ve always been in the medical bay, though, laid out on tables, usually after an attempt at surgery or after a long struggle against illness. She’s never been in combat herself; there was a reason she pursued medicine like her mother. Her father’s an engineer. This isn’t even battle, though. It’s just senseless. An accident that she somehow survived.

Captain Blake wanders off. Clarke considers asking where he’s going, then decides she doesn’t care. She probably should. They aren’t a unit by any means, just a hodge-podge of unlucky idiots who all piled into the same escape pod. She doubts it was the pod any of them were actually assigned to, and though there’s passing familiarity between some of them that doesn’t mean there’s any kind of discipline in this situation. Clarke is a doctor; she’s never had much in the way of military obedience. If Blake wants to go pee in the woods alone, or whatever it is he’s up to, let him. Clarke has better things to worry about, like the injured. This she can handle. Maybe.

Murphy stands over her shoulder, staring dispassionately down at the injured woman. “She gonna die?”

“I don’t think so.” As if on cue, the engineer groans and shifts, fingers clenching in the dirt before relaxing.

“You know we’re fucked if she dies.”

“Yeah.”

“You know Blake doesn’t want -”

The engineer starts coughing, and Clarke hurries to roll her onto her side. The other girl’s coughing up blood, and curls up into the fetal position once on her side. Clarke rubs at her shoulder. Eventually, the engineer’s coughing subsides, and Clarke helps her sit up.

“Am I dead?”

“Nope,” Murphy says, before Clarke can reply. “Unfortunately.”

“Murphy -!”

“What? We’re stuck in the middle of nowhere with no way to contact anyone. I don’t know about you but I’m envying the general a bit right now.”

Clarke punches him in the thigh, not bothering to stand up to hit him. “Shut up. We’re going to be fine. Now that - what’s your name, anyway?”

“Raven,” the girl says, watching the two of them warily. “Why is me being here going to make things better?”

“The radio’s busted,” Clarke says. “You’re an engineer, right? You can -”

“Mechanic,” Raven corrects. “And of course I can. Maybe. I’ll have to see it first. And - wait, I thought you were a deserter.”

Murphy holds his hands out to his sides, half a shrug and half a gesture of peace. “What, are you going to court martial me?”

“Nah.”

-

“This is going to take more than a day,” Raven announces. The rest of them have been sitting around useless for the better part of an hour, playing sabacc - Murphy had snuck a deck under his armor, somehow. Captain Blake is still off on his own.

Clarke has been watching over Lieutenant Miller, but without supplies there isn’t much she can do other than watch and wait. “Then what are we going to do for shelter?”

“Probably should have thought of that earlier,” Murphy says, eyeing the sky.

“Oh, fuck you.” Clarke sighs. “Go find us someplace to stay.”

-

A few hours later, night falls and they have a haphazard attempt at a lean-to created from stray branches piled up against a thick tree trunk. It barely counts as a shelter and will barely fit the four of them, let alone Blake and his prisoner.

“You think Blake got killed?” Murphy asks. “Maybe he ran into the locals.”

“We don’t know if there are locals -”

“There totally are,” Murphy says. “While I was out looking for stuff I found some arrows. They won’t be able to help with the escape pod, probably, but they sure can help with the four of us being alive.” He pauses, and makes a face. “I mean they can kill us.”

“I got that,” Clarke says.

“Yeah, this sucks,” Raven says. “I should have joined the rebellion.”

Clarke stares at her, scandalized. “Raven! Are all of you traitors?”

“You never know, ol’ Miller here could be a loyalist.” Murphy pats the unconscious man’s arm. “Maybe you aren’t alone.”

“And maybe Blake is going to come back with good news.” Clarke sighs, leaning back against the tree and looking up at the canopy of branches. “I hate this. Someone should have come for us by now.”

-

Clarke isn’t sure when she falls asleep. There’s no good way to tell time on the surface; no way to compare it to the ship’s time, to Galactic Standard, or even to know what time it is locally on the planet itself.

Something wakes her in the middle of the night. She strains her ears, and for a long time all she can hear are the cries of unfamiliar creatures. Any of them could have been what woke her up, and any of them could be ready to descend on their little shelter to kill them. She lets out a breath and rolls onto her side, pulling her jacket tighter around her and squeezing her eyes shut.

Just as Clarke is almost asleep again, she hears an unfamiliar voice outside. She can’t tell how far away. “Wocha, teik oso frag em op. Beja?” 

Whatever the person’s saying, it sure isn’t in Basic. Clarke holds her breath.

“No, oso gaf hon em daun,” another voice says. From the sounds of it, the second speaker is a woman, though Clarke shouldn’t make assumptions. She reaches slowly for Murphy’s blaster, laid out on the ground beside him; the stormtrooper is still asleep, even snoring.

He wakes up when she touches his blaster, though, and yells at her, and that wakes up Raven and the heretofore-unconscious Miller, too. A confused fight over the blaster ends up knocking over their shabby little lean-to, and the scuffle only stops when they realize they’re surrounded by over a dozen men and women with spears and knives.

Clarke lets go of the blaster, staring wild-eyed at the group of strangers. Her voice cracks. “Hi?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made an editing mistake last chapter; please note, Lexa isn't in ch. 1. I used the title 'Heda' when I didn't mean to and forgot to fix it. So, uh. Just know that going into this one. (If this is the first chapter you're reading - hi! Ignore this.) Aside from that, please forgive any Trigedasleng errors - if something's grammatically awful and you notice it, let me know 'cuz I'd love to fix my translations! I'm not providing translation in footnotes or anything because the characters aren't supposed to know what's being said around them. 
> 
> also juggling so many characters on the page at once is rough, i'm gonna try and split up scenes a little going forward.

Miller, despite being completely out of the loop on the situation, is the first to speak. “Hey, we don’t want any trouble.”

“Nope,” Murphy agrees. He holds his hands up, a gesture which might be more effective if one hand weren’t still wrapped around the grip of his blaster. “No trouble. You want to help us fix our distress beacon?”

The dozen or so strangers eye them up, looking wholly unimpressed with what they’ve found. One of them - a dark-skinned women with a tattooed face - steps forward. She speaks very slowly, like she’s addressing a group of inattentive children. “Oso na tai yo op, den led yo gon stegeda in.”

“Anybody know what she’s saying?” Clarke asks, without much hope. “No? Great.”

“Do - any - of - you - speak - Galactic - Basic?” Raven asks, spreading her words out even slower than the woman. “We’re from the Empire. There’s a reward.”

“There’s not a f --” Murphy starts, but Raven cuffs him in the mouth with the back of one hand, barely looking at him. “Fine, okay, fine. A reward! Yeah. More pointy sticks, just for you guys.”

“Hod op. Ai gona na teik yo gon we,” the woman in charge says. “Ait?”

“Gun?” Raven repeats. “Are they saying gun? Murphy, I think they mean your blaster.”

“No. Absolutely not.” Murphy bristles, taking a step back. He has both hands firmly on the blaster now, and points it at the gathered warriors. None of them so much as flinch, until he fires it at the ground. “Back off!”

Before he can fire again, an arrow pierces his shoulder armor, sinking into his flesh; he drops the blaster and it goes off harmlessly into the dirt. Murphy drops to his knees, staggered, lifting a hand to the ruined duraplast to feel the blood pooling in the deformed surface.

“Hey, hey, hey! Stop, stop.” Clarke backs away, looking around, trying to identify where the arrow came from. They must have people out in the woods, hiding in the shadows. Maybe even in the trees, judging by the angle the arrow hit Murphy. “Stop, we’ll come with you. We surrender.”

“They don’t know what you’re saying -” Miller starts, but the warriors seem to take the meaning from context - the huddled group of Imperials have utterly lost their will to fight, if any of them besides maybe Murphy had such a thing to begin with.

The lot of them have lasted this long in service to the Emperor. By necessity, they’ve learned when to pick their battles and when to follow orders. Right now, following orders seems like the thing to do.

“This sucks,” Raven remarks, as the warriors tie their little delinquent crew up with rough rope around their wrists. She tries to pull her wrists apart to get a little more slack. “Ow! That’s too tight -”

At her complaining, she gets a swat to the back of the head. That gets her to subside.

Murphy, watching tiredly as a pair of warriors examine his blaster, manages a smirk in Raven’s direction. “Serves you right.”

The rest of them, in a ragged chorus, all end up saying the same thing: “Shut up, Murphy.”

-

Clarke experiences a brief moment of hope on seeing saddled pack animals, thinking they won’t have to trudge through the woods. That hope dies as their captors mount up and leave the gaggle of stranded Imperials to walk, tied together by a rope.

The animals they’re riding are shaggy, six-legged things with spiraling horns and seven eyes - three to a side, allowing them to see up and down and to the side simultaneously - and one in the center of the forehead, staring dead ahead. They might almost remind Clarke of banthas if it weren’t for the teeth. When she smiles at one, it curls its upper lip, revealing even more teeth. She has no idea if that’s a positive or negative reaction.

“Friendly bunch,” Miller observes. “So are we the only survivors, or -”

“Where is Bellamy?” Raven cuts in. “Did he get eaten by one of these murder-banthas?”

“Captain Blake? Probably.” Clarke sighs heavily. They don’t talk much on the forced march. There are occasional paths to follow, little more than deer tracks, and their uniforms end up torn and muddied over the course of hours. Once or twice they stop, as their captors begrudgingly offer food and water, and then they’re on the move again. No privacy’s allowed for biological functions, a fact their captors seem wholly unbothered by. That’s somehow reassuring to Clarke. At least the Imperials aren’t a source of sadistic pleasure.

The light filtering through the blue-green trees makes the forest feel almost underwater. The muddy ground lends to the illusion. Clarke nearly steps on a snake, once, and screams; one of the riders looks sharply at her, then at the snake, then starts laughing.

Clarke still doesn’t know if the snake is venomous or not and that reaction doesn’t clear the matter any.

Finally, as night begins to fall again, they forest breaks at the top of a rocky valley.

Sprawling out below them is a city. There are no lights, no speeders; there’s no spaceport, either.

There is one spaceship, but it’s planted ass-end in the dirt. It resembles an Imperial Star Destroyer, but it’s much older than any ship Clarke’s ever seen in service. The vessel pierces the valley, aiming toward the heavens as if homesick. The structure is festooned with banners and rust; trees and greenery have found purchase on some of its surfaces. At the very top of the superstructure is a massive, tattered red flag with the Insignia of Unity emblazoned on it in white. A set of wings embrace the circular symbol.

“Huh,” Murphy says. “Looks like someone really likes the Old Republic.”

“Or the Jedi,” Miller says.

“Same difference,” Murphy says.

“The Jedi weren’t everything, even back then.” Raven scoffs. “We have to get into that ship. I bet I can find parts -”

“As long as they’re not all broken or recycled?” Murphy says. “Because I bet you that thing’s gutted. Look at that, there’s trees growing on it.”

“There’ll be something. Look, just let me believe this, okay? I don’t want to imagine a world where I have to - I don’t know, machine parts from scrap? Because that would suck.”

“Yeah, but you could totally do it,” Murphy says. “I bet you’re looking forward to it.”

“Shut up, Murphy.”

“You are!”

“Shof op,” one of their captors says, dismounting to lead them down the steep slope. She slaps her mount on the haunches and it goes bounding off on its own toward the city, far faster than any of the humans could hope to run. The others do the same, though at no point do they let go of the ropes binding the group.

“They’re just lucky it didn’t crash nose-first,” Raven mumbles to Clarke. “Thing would’ve fallen over in -”

“Hosh. Op,” the leader says.

Clarke really wishes they’d introduced themselves. She tries pointing to the ship. “Is that where we’re going?”

“Hosh -”

“I get it, I get it.” Clarke sighs, letting her head drop. She focuses on the path beneath her feet, watching pebbles scatter underfoot. The stone to her side is striated, showing millennia of sedimentary deposit and accumulated layers of earth turned to stone. The fossilized skeleton of a huge fish sticks out slightly from the wall; each warrior touches its snout as they pass. The ancient bone is worn smooth and almost glossy.

Clarke wonders how long these people have lived here, if any of them have ever left this planet. The idea of someplace as isolated as this group of people seems to be terrifies her. Born on a space station, Clarke hasn’t spent much time planetside before. Even when she has, its been on populous worlds like Coruscant, where she sat her office exams, or Corellia, where her mother insisted the family vacation once. Today’s already marked the longest day she’s ever spent in anything resembling nature.

She doesn’t like it much. In her mind, she starts constructing an elaborate fantasy where Captain Blake and his mystery prisoner - her dad, she decides, because why not - swoop in on speeders, blasters blazing, and save the day, getting them offworld and back to the Empire, where the fury of a fleet of Star Destroyers can be brought to bear on the whole planet.

After evacuating the native population and bringing them up to speed with the galaxy at large, of course. She’s a doctor, not a genocidal maniac. In a more reasonable flight of fancy, she imagines negotiating her way out of here and onto a passing freighter. Surely the world can’t be that isolated - there’s got to be a spaceport somewhere. Maybe it’s a few days ride away. She can cozy up to one of the locals and get out of here and let these people get back to their rustic lifestyle.

At least the city’s lively. The population is mostly human, though there are a few scattered Rodians and, at one point, a Bothan she spies in the back of a crowd. And there are definitely crowds - when they reach the outskirts, no one pays them much mind, but as they journey further into the city more and more people take notice, and start following them.

“Em bilaik skaiveida?” one of the locals shouts. “Osir na bants?”

“Vader?” Raven whispers sharply. Clarke can’t offer anything more useful than a shrug. That doesn’t seem likely, given the context, but neither does an entire planet full of humans - or near-humans - without anything even close to modern technology.

-

They’re brought to a low wooden building that lies, currently, at the very tip of the shadow of the stranded ship. A crowd waits here, too, ringing the shack at a respectful distance.

What greets them is a droid. It tries a few greetings on them, all incomprehensible, then, “Welcome. Do you understand?”

“Yes!” Clarke says, almost lunging forward were it not for the ropes holding her in place. She gets a warning smack on the back of the head and is jerked backwards, and in response she subsides. “Finally. Finally, someone we can talk to. Hi. Is - what is this place?”

“A sanctuary,” the droid replies. Its metal body has been painted and repainted. There are faded markings replaced by newer ones; a fresh coast of paint covers up a dent on the left side of its face. Unfamiliar markings go from about where its nose would be, if it were human, to the dome of its head, intersecting with a circle decorated with more patterns and designs that Clarke can’t get a good look at. The droid’s body is generally humanoid, though much of it is hidden under a cloak. Three-fingered metal hands jut out from the voluminous sleeves. “Why have you come here?”

“Our ship got blown up.”

“We saw.” The droid gestures at the room at large. Clarke realizes, with a start, that there are very few people in here now. Besides the six of them and the droid, the room holds the leader of their captors, one of the men who was there before, and a servant girl seated in a chair behind the droid who watches the proceedings with interest. The girl is dressed in rags and won’t meet anyone’s eyes. “The explosion was visible from here even in daylight.”

She looks to the others. Murphy perks up, nodding his head minutely toward the door -

“Please, don’t try to escape,” the droid interjects. “We would have answers.”

“We just need parts, then we’ll go,” Clarke says. “If we could scavenge that ship; or if you know somewhere else to find salvage …”

“Are you the leader?” the droid asks.

No one else speaks up. The silence stretches on uncomfortably, before Clarke says, “Yes. Apparently.”

“There were losses,” the droid reminds her, voice almost chiding. “One of them must have been your commanding officer.” It confers with the warrior woman and the serving girl for a brief while before addressing them again. “If you all agree, we will treat this one as your leader.”

“Sure,” Murphy says. “Go for it.”

Raven sounds almost apologetic. “Might as well.”

“What about …” Miller starts, then stops at a look from Clarke herself. “Right. No, okay, Clarke it is.”

“Clarke,” the droid says. “This community was founded intentionally. We would prefer that no one know of it.”

“Fine, we won’t tell -”

“I see. You don’t understand,” he says. “I’m telling you that you won’t be allowed to leave.”

“Ah,” Clarke says. “Right. So we’re prisoners.”

“No. You can live here freely, but if you’re found attempting to return to your escape pod or to create a radio -” The droid leaves off there, following the thought with a staticky hum full of dire portent. 

Clarke bites her lip. “Okay.”

“Clarke!” Miller jerks his head up. “You can’t be serious -”

“Miller, it’s fine. We’ll talk about this later.”

Miller doesn’t seem convinced, but the other humans in the room don’t look pleased with him. The droid is impassive as ever, metal face incapable of emoting. It probably disapproves too. “You’re the boss.”

The droid raises a hand, giving them pause. It speaks once more, this time in the local language. The serving girl rises from her seat, all reluctant indolence, and leans over the droid’s shoulder to whisper inaudibly to it. The two of them converse at some length.

“I’ll help you settle in,” the girl says, gaze locked securely on the floor. She clasps her hands behind her back, shy and demure. “It would be my honor, visitors from the sky.”

“Sonchaheda -” the woman warrior steps forward, looking almost offended.

“Chil au, Indra,” she says. Clarke sighs, resting back on her heels as those two proceed to have it out with one another. The conversation is quick and impassioned but the warrior eventually acquiesces. Odd, that she would listen to a servant.

“Please,” the servant girl finally says, addressing the Imperials again. Her eyes are a striking green, eerily intense. She stands beside the droid, lit from behind by flickering torchlight, and Clarke can’t stop staring at her. “Follow me; I’ll show you where you’ll be staying. My name is Lexa kom Trikru, and I’m pleased to finally meet you.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this is such a short one and that it's been so long between chapters. I've got a con coming up this weekend though so uhhhhh, I don't assume I'll get a lot more writing done? I'm going to try and get to updating once a week, I think that is the plan. Next chapter will have ACTION and ADVENTURE and reveal a SECRET OR TWO.

Night on this planet is darker than anything Clarke’s ever experienced. Most of her life has been spent in space, surrounded by darkness, but always with lit hallways and emergency lights. Even in her sealed quarters at night, she had a little light to help her see should she happen to wake.

Here, the stars feel further away than ever. She knows, deep down, that a planet’s just another point in space - a larger vessel than a Star Destroyer or shuttlecraft or space station, to be sure, but still committed to its own long voyage around a single star. It feels different, though, and terrifying.

She feels so small here, under the big, dark sky as the follow the servant girl. Lexa holds a torch aloft as they weave through the city streets. The light it casts is faint and flickering and doesn’t extend far. Enough time has passed since their arrival that most of the city lies still and sleeping. 

“So that droid,” Murphy says. “You guys worship him, or what?”

Lexa only barely turns her head toward him, not really looking at Murphy when she replies. “No. He provides wisdom and it’s up to us what we do with it.”

“Got it. Supreme leader droid-o, check.”

Lexa lifts her chin. “You would do well not to insult him.”

Clarke tries for a gentler tack, wanting to get out of here just as badly as any of them but not wanting to anger those whose mercy their lives depend on. “He gives you advice and you follow it. More like - like a father figure to an entire city instead of a leader, right?”

Rather than answer directly, Lexa ducks into an alley and pushes open a wooden door into a small building. There are cloth mats laid out on the floor, stuffed full of something that leaves them thick and lumpen. “Here it is.”

Raven’s the first to ask. “What is this, exactly?”

“Your sleeping place.” Lexa looks, for the first time, something close to amused. “There will be a guard posted outside tonight. You will be well cared for. We can speak again in the morning.”

“You know, I’ve slept worse places,” Murphy says. He’s the first to start undressing, shucking off his armor and stripping off his shirt.

“You’re bleeding again,” Clarke notes.

Lexa considers this, then says, “Come with me. I’ll take you to the healer.”

Murphy sounds a bit faint. “You know, with all the excitement, I forgot about getting shot?”

-

“So what now?” Raven asks, voice a low whisper. The remaining three of them sit in a tight circle, leaning in close. The one good thing about being captured by primitives is there’s no chance they have any devices to spy on them with. Even the droid didn’t look like he was in good shape. It means they’ve got a little privacy. “We don’t know what happened to Bellamy. We need to find a way out of here.”

“We need to wait, is what we need to do,” Clarke says. “Figure out the lay of the land, try to get in good with the locals. There’s no way we can fight them. But if we can offer them something in trade, maybe they’ll let us go.”

“We don’t have a lot going for us,” Miller says.

“Sure we do. You’re a junior officer, you know … officer stuff; I’m a medical officer; Raven’s a mechanic. We just have to figure out what’ll be most useful to them.”

“Let’s be real, it’s probably you.” Raven rolls her eyes, though not unkindly. “They don’t seem to like tech besides that droid overlord of theirs, and I’m guessing they won’t have a lot of interest in fleet maneuvers.”

“Sorry, I know this is important, but should we have let Murphy just - go like that?” Miller asks, eyeing the door worriedly.

“Why not? He’s hurt.” Clarke makes a face. “I don’t have any tools handy. I guess I could have asked? But if Lexa and that droid are the only ones here who know Basic, I know who I’d rather trust.”

“The friendly servant instead of the creepy droid,” Raven says. “Yeah, I’m with Clarke. I think Murphy’ll be fine.”

“I hope so,” Clarke says. “Even if he is a traitor, I want all of us to get out of here alive. I don’t think - none of us want to stay here, right?”

“For forever? No way,” Raven says. “I’ve got a husband to get back to.”

“Me too,” Miller says. “Well, no, we’re not married, but - look, even without that, I don’t want to be stuck on one single planet for the rest of my life.”

Clarke folds her hands in her lap, taking a deep breath and nodding. “So we’re all agreed. Good. We find out what they might want, give it to them, and get the hell out of here.”

-

The following morning, Lexa comes to them with a tray of food. Bread, whole eggs, and unidentifiable strips of meat are laid out along with nuts and fruit. She remains standing with the tray until Clarke startles to her feet and takes it.

“Do you want to join us for breakfast?” Clarke asks. “We should talk.”

Lexa looks them over impassively, then nods. There’s a small square table in the center of the room, and Lexa folds her legs and sits gracefully in front of it, her back military-straight. Clarke is admittedly impressed that a planet like this has such disciplined workers. The droid, for all that it’s just a machine and is well above its place, seems to be doing a decent job running things.

Except for the fact that there’s not a shred of technology. That grates. Clarke has not once in her life spent so long without lights and machines and the conveniences of life. Mankind’s had tens of thousands of years to throw off that part of their past. Maybe if she’d come here on purpose, she would appreciate it more. If, instead of crash landing, she had gone home to the space station she grew up on only to find the terraforming of her ostensible homeworld was complete and the place was habitable again --

But that’s not what happened, and isn’t where she is, and even if her homeworld had fully recovered from the battles waged on it back in the Clone Wars she would still appreciate a little technology here and there. Even just a bacta tank and a working radio would be good enough to make things palatable. Clarke picks at the breakfast the servant brought them, looking at her fellow Imperials and considering how to open this conversation.

“So,” Clarke finally says, having successfully stacked as many things as she can safely fit onto a single slice of bread in a pleasing arrangement. “Like we were telling your leader yesterday, we don’t want trouble. I know the droid said we can’t leave, but we’re willing to bargain. There’s not that many of use; we won’t share your secret.”

Lexa is silent for so long that Clarke wonders if the serving girl even understood her. “You’re planning on communicating with others off-world, yes? That would involve more than a few additional people, I assume.”

Clarke bites at her lip. “Well, yeah, but we could - arrange things so we got picked up someplace without any people. So it was just us. They’d never know you were here.”

Lexa watches Clarke so intently that Clarke, just to escape that scrutiny for a moment, instead fixates on her sandwich.

“We don’t want to hurt you guys or mess with whatever you’re doing here,” Miller chimes in, helpfully. “I mean, I’ve never heard of this place, but it doesn’t look like you have a lot of resources we’d want from you. We just want the four of us off of here -”

“Four?” Lexa asks, dryly. “Is that all?”

“Weeelllll,” Raven says slowly, carefully. “There were a few other people in the escape pod. Some of them died, and a few sort of. Disappeared?”

“You can’t even keep track of six people,” Lexa says. She spears a strip of meat on a small knife, and takes a thoughtful, unhurried bite. “And we’re expected to trust you.”

Clarke swallows quickly, then clears her throat. “Yes?”


End file.
